The Gender Wars 1/1
by Quaxo
Summary: Ooh.... strange ficky...


The Gender Wars (subtitled: Shampoo of feminists everywhere) by Quaxo 

Author's Notes: This has just been... well... something I was wondering, and this is how I'm going to answer it. Also, I am a feminist, it's just that I believe if you can't laugh at yourself, then life sucks for you. 

It was a rainy night, and because the author can't think of anything creative at this point in time, she is going to be cliche' and make Harry, Ron, and Hermoine sitting around the fireplace. Harry, Hermoine and Ron were sitting around the fire, all toasty warm, reading various things. Hermoine was reading War and Peace, Harry was reading a book of Wizard Chess strategy, and Ron, was much to his lament, was finishing his Potions Essay. 

Suddenly Ron snapped his Potions book shut and said, "What does he do with all of it?" 

"What?" Harry asked. 

"Who?" Hermoine inquired. 

"Snape, what does he do with all those potions that we make? Half the time, two people make a cauldron full, that means he has ten cauldrons full of whatever we're making, and other times he has twenty if we work alone, and that's just our class. What does he do with it?" 

"Dump it probably." Harry replied, turning back to his book. 

"No... then he'd be polluting the enviroment, which would get Hogwarts in trouble." Hermoine answered, thus delivering a small moral lesson in this story. 

"I don't know then..." Harry shrugged. 

"Wow, Mr. Hero-of-the-Wizarding-World doesn't have the answer!" Heroine said sarcastically, causing both Ron and Harry to look at her in shock. "Big suprise, since I get the answers most of the time, but do I get any credit? Noooo... it's all little Harry Potter boy genius! Then you guys make fun of me, even though I've saved your butts more than once!" Hermoine said angrily. "I'm sick of it! Do you hear me? SICK OF IT! You boys never acknowledge me!" 

"Hermoine, what's got into you?" Ron and Harry asked in unison. 

"Nothing's gotten into me! I was just thinking about this in the shower, while I was washing my hair, and I realized for the past four years that you guys have taken all the credit!" Hermoine snapped. "You guys figure it out." She drawled before walking upstairs angrily. 

"That was weird..." Ron whispered. 

"No kidding..." Harry said quietly. 

"Why are we whispering?" Ron hissed. 

"I don't know." Harry replied softly. 

The question troubled them all that week, for all the girls seemed to have adopted Hermoine's attitude towards them, and the other guys. While it was funny when Pavarti Patil dumped her Shrinking Potion on Draco, much to Professor Snape's fury, which caused him to deduct fifteen points from Gryffindor, only after Lavender Brown called him a chauvenistic pig, things were generally bad for all males in school. Apparently this strange diesease had infected all females in the school, excluding their Professors... which due to the boys' ignorance they didn't recognize as women. 

It was late night, when Fred and George Weasley called a meeting in the depths of the dungeons. Every male student was packed in, all with the same problem: Women. 

"Men, we've got to do something!" Fred demanded, and there was a mild roar from everyone, since most were afraid that the dreaded women would hear them and exact revenge upon them of the most awful kind. 

"But what?" Terry Boot, a Ravenclaw, asked. "They're out of control, we all know it, but there's no stopping them!" 

"We could all become celebate priests...?" Neville Longbottom suggested, who was frightened by girls far more now than he was of Professor Snape. This however was quickly dismissed, for many of the males present, a good 99.95% wanted to have pretty little girlfriends, and good wives, they just didn't want them as they were currently, loud-mouthed and strong-willed. 

"I think, I've got something on them..." Blaise Zambini offered, pushing his way to the front, in the general rude fashion of a Slytherin. "I was up early, the morning that all the Slytherin trouble started, and all the girls had headed to the showers, when they came back, they were like they are now..." 

"Right! Cho snapped at me for opening the door for her, and I noticed her hair was still wet!" Terry Boot replied, satisfied that he'd actually got more the one line in. 

"Obviously, men, the problem is the Girl's showers. Whatever has warped their minds is in there, and someone needs to scout it out." George announced, and the crowd gave a meaningful look to Harry and Ron. Meanwhile, Neville wrote himself a note to get himself a book of learning Latin, he might need to brush up a little. 

**** 

"I can't believe we're doing this..." Ron snarled, looking around the corner. "If you weren't savior of the wizarding world, we wouldn't be in this mess!" 

"Don't blame me!" Harry said in a slightly higher voice as he prayed that there was no girls in the bathroom... it could get very painful if there were. He crouched over a little more. "I didn't ask for this title..." Harry whined. 

"Come on..." Ron hissed, slowly opening the door of the shower room. 

They were awed by what they saw, mostly because they hadn't been in the Girl's shower room before. They had been expecting piles of pink loofahs and pink and purple shower curtains, with cute little soaps and candles everywhere. What they found was black tiles, with spartan bars of plain white soap, school brand. The vanities were absent of all the makeup that they'd been expecting to see. They noticed that there was a large trashcan, with a pink towel hanging out of it. Otherwise, the room was absolutely stark of anything but black and white. Except for the dark green bottles of shampoo in every stall. Harry approached warily and grabbed the closest bottle. There was plain type silver writing on it, and Harry read it aloud: 

Primavera, the shampoo made for the independent woman. Made with natural herbs, with absolutely no flowery smell. Free of dyes, and never tested on animals. Directions: Apply, lather, rinse. Repeat if desired. Produced by: Nova Inc. P.O. Box 34534 London, England. 

"So that's not school brand, and every girl has got it, this obviously means that this is what's causing all the girls to act like nutters!" Ron said, feeling proud of himself. Maybe they didn't need Hermoine afterall. 

They showed the bottle to Fred and George, who congradulated them for not getting caught and tortured, for doing a good job, and that they were to right the letter of complaint to the company. 

They worked for hours... alright, so they wrote a nasty letter in all of five minutes and sent it via owl, and awaited the reply. 

Alas, none came, and the situation only became worse. Girls were now giving a harsh slap to any boy who looked in their direction, and a sharp knee to any guy who came in physical contact with them. Soon, paintings and sculptures of Susan B. Anthony, Helen Keller, and other female activists replaced the suits of armor and most of the pieces of art. The Fat Lady, herself changed, signs decorating her backround protesting many things and generally anti-male. Her cup of tea was replaced with a German beer stien, and the Fat Lady now wore a green flannel shirt and a pair of brown Carharts. 

But to the shock of Harry and Ron was that at the loud protests staged by the girls, now included Professors' McGonagall, Sprout, and Sinistra, and Madam Hooch and Pomfrey, screaming that, "Dumbledore's reign of oppression must end!" All the male Professors were smart and stayed clear. 

"Man, this sucks." Harry sighed as he sat in the freezing cold corner of the common room with Ron, while all the girls sat around the fire talking strategy with each other. "They even killed Quidditch!" Yes, much to the male student population's horror, the girls had gotten Quidditch banned, and built a vast art and music hall over the Quidditch field. "And those bloody people at Nova, they haven't replied! I think we need to make a personal appearence at their headquarters." Harry continued. 

"That's it! I can get Percy to give me the name of whomever owns that P.O. Box!" Ron said, immediately pulling out his handy-dandy quill, ink and parchment. 

"Percy works at the Post Office?" Harry asked, unbelievingly. 

"Yeah... he was working at the Ministry, but he got demoted to the Post Office by his female supervisor. It's gone past Hogwarts, Harry." Ron muttered as he scribbled a note, indicating that they knew what was happening to all the women, and that they needed him desperately, and slipping in a galleon that he'd saved. 

The reply took several days, which was pretty fast for the Post Office, and to Harry and Ron's shock, it was Percy who arrived, bedraggled, his blue and white robe stained and tattered with mud, his uniform baseball cap covered in grime. He looked as if he had to walk to Hogwarts. 

"They freed all the owls, saying that it was animal abuse to make the owls carry anything that wasn't part of their natural habitat." Were the first words out of Percy's mouth as he stepped infront of Ron and Harry during passing time to Dinner. There was no need to explain who 'they' were. 

"So who owns the box, and where do we find them." Ron said, pulling the exhausted Percy aside. 

"Professor Snape... oddly enough..." Percy said, licking his dry lips. 

"He's behind this??!" Harry exclaimed. 

"Yeah..." Percy sighed. "Do you mind if I get something to drink, I've been walking here for five days." 

"Wait, you're telling me that Professor Snape, our Professor Snape, is running Nova Inc.?" Ron asked, holding Percy back. 

"Yes! That's what I said! Now, let me go you little bimbo!" Percy shouted, his nerves shot after walking in the rain, and sleeping in the mud for the past five days, which is quite understandable. 

This however was his mistake, because the entire female population turned, and began to scowl. 

"They're bringing in reinforcements!" Cho Chang shouted, pointing at Percy, who wisely started to run from the feminist mob getting ready to lynch. Harry and Ron also ran, but into the girls. The general theory for calculating the I.Q. of a mob is this: take the I.Q. of the stupidest person there, and divide by the number of people in the mob, therefore, Harry and Ron were not noticed. 

They headed down to the dungeons, and finally found Professor Snape's office. They kicked open the door, and entered, finding Professor Snape reading, 'The Feminine Mystique.'. 

"Traitor!" Harry screamed, pointing his wand. 

"How could you betray your own sex like this!" Ron shouted, pulling out his own wand. 

"You're supposed to be my male role-model after Dumbledore!" Harry cried, lying slightly, since Snape was his male role-model after about fifty other people and Uncle Vernon. "You taught me, as well as the rest of the school that really cool dueling curse! You saved my life! How could you do this to us! To Dumbledore!" Harry said passionately. Snape, was however, rolling on the floor laughing to the point he was almost crying. 

"Do you know how much I DON'T get paid for this job?" Snape said, after about two minutes, pushing himself up to his feet. "I'm the youngest staff member, and the board of Goveners cut the teacher's pay three-fourths of what they normally get paid after the year 1980, starting August 30th. I've been teaching here since August 31st, 1980. Filch gets paid more than me! Now, this would have been fine, if any of you brats actually cared for what I taught, so I could have some feeling that I've done something to help this world, and what do you? You spit at what I teach!" Snape shouted, furious. "So I started enterprising, my own little industry, all self contained right in the dungeons at Hogwarts." He paused. "Do you know why it's so cold in the Dungeons, it's because they won't give me permission to light any unnecessary fires down here, to save magic! And apparently, heating is use of unnecessary flames." Snape snarled. 

"But how do you create all that shampoo? I mean, it would take forever, and you couldn't keep it hidden down here." Ron said suspisciously. 

"Easy, every single Potion that all you brats made, I made into Shampoo, and sold it. At first it was very hard, and many batches were lost, and the usable shampoo was only for exclusive customers. Eventually, I got familiar with enough with the Potions that I could make more sucessful batches, and I expanded the salesmarket from there." Snape replied evenly. 

"So that's why you get so angry when Neville messes up, or anyone messes up, their Potion, it means a lost market." Harry said in shock. "But, I'm pretty sure Dumbledore wouldn't let you do this, if he knew, it goes against the codes of conduct!" Harry shouted, remembering that particular passage from the teacher's handbook, after he tried to find a reason to get Snape kicked out for misconduct in the school, or at least sue him. Snape smiled eeriely. 

"I've already evaded that, you see Potter, when I sell your Potions, made into Shampoo, it goes down as safe disposal, afterall, I couldn't throw it in the river, now could I? And I couldn't let those Potions go to waste either. Not to mention Dumbledore gets a small kickback from profits for keeping it quiet to the board, and I end up earning more than my co-workers, of course they don't know that. They've laughed at me for so many years, because I'm the underpaid young one, and they'll retire happy and loaded, and I'll work at your Muggle McDonald's five days a week. Now I earn far far more than them, and when I quit this job, I'll be richer than all of them!" Snape said, laughing manically. 

"But what's with all this feminism? It's your shampoo that's causing them to act this way!" Harry demanded. 

"And where's our bloody pay! We're the one who made you all this money!" Ron said angrily. 

"Weasley, you've got no union, and technically, your education counts as your paycheck, they've got to pay us teachers' somehow." Snape said cooly. "As for the feminism, that was merely a not-so-sad,- sad-by-product of making all those potions into shampoo. Well... it's a sad by-product for you guys, it's benifiting me." Harry and Ron stared at each other, open-mouthed. 

"We'll tell them all! All those girls up there that you're making their shampoo, and they'll stop using it, and we'll stop you!" Ron said frantically. 

"It's no use Weasley, the owner of Nova Inc. to them is reclusive Henna James, she's got countless biographies out about her now, nobody will believe you." Snape said, a twisted smirk on his face. 

"But how could you do this to man-kind?" Harry pleaded weakly. 

"Harry," Snape said sarcastically. "For God's sake, get a clue. I prefer women to men. I favour my female students. Haven't you noticed that Lavender Brown and Pavarti Patil are some of my best students out of Gryffindor? Well... besides the fact that they're good." 

"But you hate Hermoine!" Harry challenged. 

"Hermoine's a walking book. I will admit she has potential. But she's so bogged down in 'Tradition'. Something out of Fiddler on the Roof..." 

"What?" Ron asked. 

"A musical from the sixties... about a group of Jews living in Russia, and... well it doesn't matter. Hermoine's afraid to break out and be a woman, she's afraid. The shampoo helps." 

"But it's altering their minds!" Harry shouted. 

"No, actually it's not. It's the suggestive advertising. I've got it where Suave failed. 'Made for women, by women'. I mean, what the hell is up with, 'Strong enough for a man, made for a woman.'?" Snape said, shaking his head. 

Harry and Ron backed slowly out, and went back to the common room, which was empty. Harry waved his wand and made a six pack of soda appear. 

"Well... we're doomed." Harry said, as he gulped his soda, before throwing the empty can behind him carelessly. 

"Yup..., by a disgruntled Potion's Professor." Ron agreed grimly, throwing his own can on the floor. 

"But would it of happened anyway, without him?" Harry asked. 

"Probably." 

"Well... then there's nothing we can do." Harry shrugged, and soon he and Ron were engaged in a race to see who could drink the most soda. The girls were furious when they found the piles of cans and two sleeping guys. It absolutely made them angry, and they nagged Harry and Ron for days about it. 

However the other guys soon joined in the soda drinking competition, gladly annoying the girls. 

The girls moved onto bigger and better things, and the Magical world was soon run by women. Most men stayed home and raised the kids, and cleaned house, since the women were very bad at keeping tidy. 

****** 

"E Pluribus Unim..." Neville said before the crowds of people. Adjusting his Pope's cap, he walked back into the church. It was good to be Pope. 


End file.
